New advertising tool from Facebook Topic Data

Facebook is stepping up its game again offering advertisers consultancy-like services in the form of the new feature Topic Data. Topic Data is supposed to teach specific brand or company what really important for their audience.

“Marketers want to understand what people think about topics related to their business, so they can make their products and marketing more relevant to their customers”. – it was announced on Facebook blog on the 10th March – “In the past they’ve looked at the things people share online to get an idea of what people care about, but, until now, the information available offered a limited view. To make marketing content more relevant for people and more effective for marketers, we’re introducing topic data to select Facebook partners”. As usual for the time being topic data will only be available to a limited number of DataSift’s partners in the US and UK.

So what is Topic data exactly?

Topic data allows marketers to see what their audience is saying on Facebook about events, brands, subjects and activities, but it is all done in a way that keeps people’s personal information private. Companies that use this data can therefore make better decisions about how they market to their audience.

Facebook generously gives us a few examples of topic data:

A business selling a hair de-frizzing product can see demographics on the people talking about humidity’s effects on their hair to better understand their target audience.

A fashion retailer can see the clothing items its target audience is talking about to decide which products to stock.

A brand can see how people are talking about their brand or industry to measure brand sentiment.

Topic data understandably does not include information from the Messenger App (that would be too creepy, perhaps?).

While the similar kind of data has been available from third parties before, the sample size was often too small to be significant and determining demographics was nearly impossible. With topic data, we’ve grouped data and stripped personal information from Facebook activity to offer insights on all the activity around a topic. That means marketers get a holistic and actionable view of their audience for the first time.

Like other insights information on Facebook, all the information used for topic data is anonymized and aggregated. Facebook will not disclose personal identifying information to anyone, including our partners and marketers.

The project is being launched together with DataSift.

“When marketers have a deeper understanding of people and what they are interested in, they can create more relevant experiences for their audiences. We focus on providing WPP’s clients with insights into what people say and think about their brands and products. By looking at topic data, we empower brands to make smarter marketing decisions. And we’ve worked with DataSift for some time—the way they cleverly collect and organize data continues to make it simple for WPP to ingest, connect and leverage it across the agency network.” — Nick Nyhan, CEO of WPP’s Data Alliance